Hiroyuki Iseki

Hiroyuki (Hiro) Iseki is research faculty with the National Center for Smart Growth and is an assistant professor of Urban Studies and Planning. He has the Master of Art and Ph.D. in Urban Planning from UCLA, as well as the Master of Engineering degree from University of Tokyo. His research focuses on balancing efficiency, effectiveness, and equity in public policy and planning with a special attention to transportation, environment, and land use. Prior to joining UMD, Hiro taught at University of Toledo, Ohio and University of New Orleans, Louisiana, and has been a research associate with Mineta Transportation Institute at San Jose State University, California.

Hiro has worked on various transportation research projects funded by university research centers, foundations, and government agencies, including University of California Transportation Center, Mineta Transportation Institute, Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, and California Department of Transportation. Hiro was involved in a series of studies on built environment, transit facilities, and crime incidents in Los Angeles, and developed a new GIS analysis method to incorporate the presence of slopes and intersections in identifying the size of bikeshed, using energy consumption as travel impedance. He was involved in a series of research projects to develop tools to evaluate the transit service quality at bus stops and train station with researchers from the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies. These tools included: 1) a toolkit of survey instruments, 2) guidelines for conducting a user survey about their perceptions of transit service quality, and 3) a downloadable customized analysis for any specific transit. For a project to assess the feasibility of interoperable smart cards for transit systems, he conducted a cost-benefit analysis, taking into account coordination among transit agencies in the San Francisco Bay area. Recently, Hiro has completed: (1) a study to examine the effects of gasoline prices on ridership of four different transit modes in ten urbanized areas, and (2) a study to develop direct ridership models to estimate the impacts of land use changes on WMATA metro station ridership. One of his current projects is a study to examine the distribution of firm locations in relation to rail stations in the Washington DC region.

Iseki, H. and M. Smart. 2012. “How Do People Perceive Service Attributes at Transit Facilities? An Examination of Perceptions of Transit Service by Transit User Demographics and Trip Characteristics,” Journal of the Transportation Research Board, 2274, 164-174.